On Media

BuzzFeed editor defends reporting practices

By HADAS GOLD

12/17/2013 11:43 AM EST

BuzzFeed News editor Lisa Tozzi recently sought to defend the site's practice of reporting events before verifying whether they are true, telling a Canadian radio show Friday that her reporters try to "reflect some of the culture going on on Twitter and Facebook."

In an interview with Brent Bambury of CBC show “Day 6," Tozzi was asked to explain BuzzFeed's story about Elan Gale, a producer for the reality show “The Bachelor,” who pretended to live-tweet a note-passing war between him and an irate fellow passenger on a Thanksgiving flight. The fake fight was picked up by BuzzFeed, which later appended an update to its story and issued a follow-up post explaining the hoax.

Tozzi, a former New York Times editor, said BuzzFeed tried to reach out to Gale before publishing but was unsuccessful. Asked why BuzzFeed would publish a story before being able to authenticate it, Tozzi said that the story had already escalated on Twitter and Facebook.

“But Twitter and Facebook aren’t news organizations; they are social media sites, people sharing the story,” Bambury countered.

“That’s correct, but we tend to reflect some of the culture going on Twitter and Facebook,” Tozzi replied.

Asked what rules, if any, BuzzFeed has for authenticating a story, Tozzi said BuzzFeed tries to authenticate everything before posting and, when it can't, it tries “to be very clear about what we know and don’t know about a story.” Tozzi also noted that Gale was “claiming” the fight had happened.

Bambury called BuzzFeed’s rules "vague" and asked Tozzi what she specifically tells her staff to do in order to authenticate a story.

“We tell them to try and contact the people involved in making a video or tweeting a story,” Tozzi said.

“And if they’re not successful and don’t do that?” Bambury asked.

“You know, there’s a lot of things we don’t publish,” Tozzi said, going on to note that BuzzFeed corrected the story and wrote a follow-up about the hoax. Later in the segment, Tozzi said that "the system broke down" in this instance.

Bambury later noted that a reporter at a traditional media outlet might have been fired for publishing the story. “It seems to me what you’re saying is that if you’re covering the Internet, the rules are different?” he said. “Why should BuzzFeed be immune to those consequences just because you’re writing about the Internet?”

“With all due respect, traditional media covered this story as well,” Tozzi replied, noting that The New York Times and the CBC also picked up the story. “It’s not totally accurate to say that we’re trying to play by different rules.”

In addition to reporting on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, BuzzFeed News has a stable of political, business and cultural reporters who publish stories that adhere to a more rigorous standard of fact-checking.

Toward the end of the interview, Tozzi acknowledged that the Gale story hit a viral sweet spot for BuzzFeed — it raked in more than 1.4 million hits, while the follow-up explaining the hoax has earned less than 500,000.

Bambury suggested that if the story hit a sweet spot, BuzzFeed wins whether it puts up a fake story or not. He then asked Tozzi whether publishing these fake stories damages BuzzFeed’s credibility.

“Putting up fake stories does damage people’s trust in us,” Tozzi replied. “It takes a bit of a hit. I do not want that to happen. I want to be in the business of reporting stories whether they be quirky human interest or really hard-hitting, hard news stories. I want to hold us to the same standards on these stories, and I want to make sure we’re publishing accurate, clear stories.”